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Location: ...1888 miles from home by the shortest route without tolls...

Posts: 15,887

Originally Posted by justintime

That definition of UFOs was taken from the Oxford dictionary.

No, it did not change his beliefs. He was just as determined to find them.

I think UFO was used in the early sighting because their were unidentifiable. But the public figured there had to be more to that because of the closed secrecy behind the Roswell UFO incident. Some of the eyewitness broke their silence and identified it as a alien spacecraft. The conspiracy is more about the coverup and not doubts about it being an alien spacecraft.

And the uncritical, unsophisticated, unsupported, credulous belief that "there really was a UFO" at Roswell, and that "the conspiracy is more about the coverup and not doubts about it being an alien spacecraft" is precisely the kind of thing Demon-Haunted World (which you really ought to read) was written to debunk.

Please explain how your claim that there has been a "conspiracy" and/or a"coverup" about "it being an alien spacecraft" demonstrate anything about Dr. Sagan's beliefs, or opinions...preferably without spin-doctoring and quote mining.

__________________"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest
"The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David
"Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze

Not true. I do not have a life long obsession with UFOs, aliens or even ETI. I am not even a Ghost buster. I just try to see the treatable person behind the Skeptic and his or her Skepticism.I try not to confuse entertainment with serious discourses.

No, it did not change his beliefs. He was just as determined to find them.

I think UFO was used in the early sighting because their were unidentifiable. But the public figured there had to be more to that because of the closed secrecy behind the Roswell UFO incident. Some of the eyewitness broke their silence and identified it as a alien spacecraft. The conspiracy is more about the coverup and not doubts about it being an alien spacecraft.

A UFO is an unidentified flying object, something with appears to be flying, appears to be an object, and which is not or has not been identified as a particular thing. If something has been identified as an alien craft, it is no longer unidentified. Once more: If we know what something is, it isn't a UFO.

And if you have objective evidence to support a claim that alien craft exist, take it to one of the appropriate threads which already exist for that discussion.

Location: ...1888 miles from home by the shortest route without tolls...

Posts: 15,887

Originally Posted by justintime

Not true. I do not have a life long obsession with UFOs, aliens or even ETI. I am not even a Ghost buster. I just try to see the treatable person behind the Skeptic and his or her Skepticism.
I try not to confuse entertainment with serious discourses.

Then why do you try to use Contact as evidence that Dr. Sagan was, as you have put it, a "snake-oil salesman"?

And where have you demonstrated your qualifications to identify anyone (much less your friend you are outing) as "treatable"? And where have you demonstrated your training in "treating" anyone so diagnosed?

__________________"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest
"The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David
"Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze

I would have pointed to Greece if the Skeptic was from there. Sorry if you are offended. I was a Joe Cocker fan Mad Dogs and Englishmen album. He was ahead of his time. I wonder if he would have retitled the album to Mad Cows and Englishmen. I digress.

It is beginning to look as if it is you, not Sagan, who believes we have been visited by alien spacecraft.

Leave Justin aloonee!

For the first time he had drawn back the curtain on what he thought, rather than what he thought other people thought. Gentle handling was called for

Now he's back in his shell.

__________________The Australian Family Association's John Morrissey was aghast when he learned Jessica Watson was bidding to become the youngest person to sail round the world alone, unaided and without stopping.

To the claim I haven't encountered any Skeptics outside of Skeptic forums. There are more important things that affect you directly in the real world. Your job, customers, patients, transactions, interactions, trust and social encounters. You don't have Skeptics out there demanding citations or criticizing your beliefs. It is a live and let live attitude out there. All the nit pickers are cesspooling on Skeptic forums.

*snipped for the sake of brevity*

I get the impression that you are well intentioned. You seem to be arguing for something you have strong convictions for, and I respect that.

Unfortunately, you've painted a picture of skeptics with a rather broad brush and as a result you've sacrificed accuracy in favor of generalizations. Yes there are participants on skeptical forums who match with your descriptions, if not always, at least some of the time. That in itself does not mean that all skeptics match these descriptions and I contend that the vast majority do not.

As well intentioned as your crusade may be, it is unlikely to bear fruit because the misdirected war you've waged is on the wrong enemy. To truly have an impact of the sort you're hoping for will require far more diligence and specificity than you're currently employing. You'll need to target and dismantle the arguments of individuals instead of lackadaisically poisoning the well. In doing so you can expose the weakness of cynicism, which is what I think you really want to do.

Even then you've got a hard road ahead of you if you want to be effective. Do yourself a favor though, and don't create enemies where there were none in the first place. Who knows, you may even come to appreciate some of the skeptical perspectives offered by many participants on forums like these.

I think looking at the dates Roswell 1947 and around 1951 Carl Sagan at 17 talking about flying saucers and aliens makes me feel he made that connection. He developed an early obsession and tried to fulfill it by searching for them for the rest of his life.
By embellishing his Cosmos program with the possibility of finding ETI through the SETI project added the type of hype that sells books and movies and panders to the irrational beliefs in aliens.

Then why do you try to use Contact as evidence that Dr. Sagan was, as you have put it, a "snake-oil salesman"?

And where have you demonstrated your qualifications to identify anyone (much less your friend you are outing) as "treatable"? And where have you demonstrated your training in "treating" anyone so diagnosed?

Indeed. It continues to appear we're witnessing some lashing out due to an anger and resentment about being smacked down by skeptics sometime in the past.

Come on, justintime, what is it you believe, that skeptics don't believe, that makes you so angry at skeptics? Was your mother a skeptic when you were an infant? Did your father smoke a cigar? A bigger one than yours? Is there a point to any of your rambling aside from you hate skeptics so you want to hang around insulting them? You do realize that activity has gotten you banned from other forums, don't you?

Location: ...1888 miles from home by the shortest route without tolls...

Posts: 15,887

Originally Posted by justintime

I think looking at the dates Roswell 1947 and around 1951 Carl Sagan at 17 talking about flying saucers and aliens makes me feel he made that connection. He developed an early obsession and tried to fulfill it by searching for them for the rest of his life.
By embellishing his Cosmos program with the possibility of finding ETI through the SETI project added the type of hype that sells books and movies and panders to the irrational beliefs in aliens.

So, with no regard to basic priciple of etymology, you build an entire case against Dr. Sagan oin what you "feel" must be true?

You are continuing to use the word "obsession" without any justification.

Your continued, and increasingly desperate, attempts at calumniating Dr. Sagan for what you want to believe he believed, are noted.

Now: be so kind as to address your qualifications for diagnosing someone as "treatable".

Further, be so kind as to address your qualifications for providing approrpiate "treatment", assuming arguendo you could, in fact, make the diagnosis.

Further, be so kind as to address the issue of denigrating the person whose identity you claim to be trying to protect as part of any approved, or accepted, "treatment".

__________________"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest
"The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David
"Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze

Location: ...1888 miles from home by the shortest route without tolls...

Posts: 15,887

Originally Posted by GeeMack

Indeed. It continues to appear we're witnessing some lashing out due to an anger and resentment about being smacked down by skeptics sometime in the past.

Come on, justintime, what is it you believe, that skeptics don't believe, that makes you so angry at skeptics? Was your mother a skeptic when you were an infant? Did your father smoke a cigar? A bigger one than yours? Is there a point to any of your rambling aside from you hate skeptics so you want to hang around insulting them? You do realize that activity has gotten you banned from other forums, don't you?

I see what you did there...

__________________"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest
"The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David
"Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze

Indeed. It continues to appear we're witnessing some lashing out due to an anger and resentment about being smacked down by skeptics sometime in the past.

Come on, justintime, what is it you believe, that skeptics don't believe, that makes you so angry at skeptics? Was your mother a skeptic when you were an infant? Did your father smoke a cigar? A bigger one than yours? Is there a point to any of your rambling aside from you hate skeptics so you want to hang around insulting them? You do realize that activity has gotten you banned from other forums, don't you?

I have been noticing the Education section is hardly drawing any interest. So I was right Skeptics are not for education.

I found the heaviest activity in the Paranormal section which included Carl Sagan and his obsession with aliens (this OP). So it is not only the Skeptic Carl Sagan who was obsessed with aliens. Most Skeptics here are just as obsessed with aliens.
I was not trying to make this an OP about aliens but about Carl Sagan as a Skeptic. But it appears one cannot separate Skeptics from their beliefs in aliens.

I think looking at the dates Roswell 1947 and around 1951 Carl Sagan at 17 talking about flying saucers and aliens makes me feel he made that connection. He developed an early obsession and tried to fulfill it by searching for them for the rest of his life.
By embellishing his Cosmos program with the possibility of finding ETI through the SETI project added the type of hype that sells books and movies and panders to the irrational beliefs in aliens.

You keep using this term as if it's a diagnosis; I don't think you can justify that. Your participation on in this thread and a few others, all concerning skepticism seems to suggest an agenda.

I have been noticing the Education section is hardly drawing any interest. So I was right Skeptics are not for education.

I found the heaviest activity in the Paranormal section which included Carl Sagan and his obsession with aliens (this OP). So it is not only the Skeptic Carl Sagan who was obsessed with aliens. Most Skeptics here are just as obsessed with aliens.
I was not trying to make this an OP about aliens but about Carl Sagan as a Skeptic. But it appears one cannot separate Skeptics from their beliefs in aliens.

Is this some sort of undergrad project? Your language skills seem passable, maybe even skilled, though with more than a hint of pedant.

You don't have to capitalize skeptic by the way. Unless you're trying to make some sort of point; then, well, you haven't I'm afraid.

As to your shot about the Education forum, you do understand many here are in fact educators, don't you?

I have been noticing the Education section is hardly drawing any interest. So I was right Skeptics are not for education.

I found the heaviest activity in the Paranormal section which included Carl Sagan and his obsession with aliens (this OP). So it is not only the Skeptic Carl Sagan who was obsessed with aliens. Most Skeptics here are just as obsessed with aliens.
I was not trying to make this an OP about aliens but about Carl Sagan as a Skeptic. But it appears one cannot separate Skeptics from their beliefs in aliens.

Oh, and I thought you intended making an effort not to confuse entertainment with serious discourse. You appear unaware that the busiest forums here are those which attract the most entertaining (or merely persistent) contrarians. It's the nutcases who are uninterested in education.

I have been noticing the Education section is hardly drawing any interest. So I was right Skeptics are not for education.

I found the heaviest activity in the Paranormal section which included Carl Sagan and his obsession with aliens (this OP). So it is not only the Skeptic Carl Sagan who was obsessed with aliens. Most Skeptics here are just as obsessed with aliens.
I was not trying to make this an OP about aliens but about Carl Sagan as a Skeptic. But it appears one cannot separate Skeptics from their beliefs in aliens.

Ah, I see. You're just trolling to get banned. I would wish you luck in that endeavor, but it looks like you'll be successful regardless.

I think UFO was used in the early sighting because their were unidentifiable. But the public figured there had to be more to that because of the closed secrecy behind the Roswell UFO incident. Some of the eyewitness broke their silence and identified it as a alien spacecraft. The conspiracy is more about the coverup and not doubts about it being an alien spacecraft.

I think we may finally be getting somewhere.

__________________Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.

Location: ...1888 miles from home by the shortest route without tolls...

Posts: 15,887

Originally Posted by justintime

I have been noticing the Education section is hardly drawing any interest. So I was right Skeptics are not for education.

I found the heaviest activity in the Paranormal section which included Carl Sagan and his obsession with aliens (this OP). So it is not only the Skeptic Carl Sagan who was obsessed with aliens. Most Skeptics here are just as obsessed with aliens.
I was not trying to make this an OP about aliens but about Carl Sagan as a Skeptic. But it appears one cannot separate Skeptics from their beliefs in aliens.

You are probably a bit too self-absorbed to realize that you are addressing a group that includes many educators. Your gratuitous attempted insult is, however, par for your course.

You cannot refer to Dr. Sagan without trying to pretend that he was a dishonest snake-oil salesman pandering to the credulous about his (as you put it) "obsession" with "UFOs and aliens". In what way have you demonstrated (remember: you made the claim, it is up to you to provide evidence) that "one cannot separate Skeptics (sic) from their beliefs in aliens"?

ETA: I see Resume beat me to it.

ETA: here is your OP: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, particularly in claims that are far fetched or that violate physical laws.Carl Sagan did not need extraordinary evidence to spend his adult life searching for ETI (aliens). He just followed his early obsessions with flying saucers and aliens to fuel his scientific curiosity and a rather weak statistical probability based on arbitrary assumptions, hardly scientific by any definition or even scientifically skeptical."
With such an opening gambit, it is not disingenuous to claim that you didn't want this thread to be "about" aliens? Particularly since most of the mentions of "aliens" in the thread are rebuttals of your OP, and your fixation on Dr. Sagan's presumed "obsession"?

__________________"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest
"The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David
"Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze

Einstein was obsessed with finding a Unified Theory of Everything
Newton was obsessed with Alchemy
Edison was obsessed with electricity.

Obsession with finding the truth (or a fiction) does not detract from the real work one does, nor does it prevent real findings.
In fact, obsession with something can be positive or negative--but it quite often leads to discovering things never before imagined...

__________________"Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
"I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriadhttp://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

Not true. I do not have a life long obsession with UFOs, aliens or even ETI. I am not even a Ghost buster. I just try to see the treatable person behind the Skeptic and his or her Skepticism.
I try not to confuse entertainment with serious discourses.

And by "treatment" you mean, what, helping them overcome their skepticism so that they can be credulous, not subjecting unusual claims to careful scrutiny and stupidly accepting wild stories about flying saucers and alien abductions, miracle elixirs, and psychic mediums?

__________________Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.

It's very simple: Carl Sagan did not have a belief in aliens. He (and many, many other scientist who agree with him) had a thorough knowledge of chemistry, biology and astronomy that led them to realize that there is a very real probability that life is not unique to the Earth. With this possibility in mind, they decided to conduct a survey using the only method available. Most felt it was a long shot that they would detect any signals, but given the low cost of listening, it was worth doing. They did not start with "We are certain that we will hear from alien civilizations". They started with "I wonder if there could be alien civilizations broadcasting radio signals? Well let's listen and see if we hear anything".

Please answer the following questions:

1. Why is it irrational to think that life may have evolved elsewhere in the universe?

2. Why is it irrational to investigate the possibility that some of that life might, like us, evolve to the point that it develops the technology to broadcast communications using radiation emissions?

__________________Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.

Einstein was obsessed with finding a Unified Theory of Everything
Newton was obsessed with Alchemy
Edison was obsessed with electricity.

Obsession with finding the truth (or a fiction) does not detract from the real work one does, nor does it prevent real findings.
In fact, obsession with something can be positive or negative--but it quite often leads to discovering things never before imagined...

By all accounts, Sagan was also "obsessed" with basketball and convincing the world of the utter foolishness, and grave danger of our own extinction, posed by the building of nuclear weapons.

__________________Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.

__________________Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.

I have been noticing the Education section is hardly drawing any interest. So I was right Skeptics are not for education.

You've made several serious errors of logic in those lone two sentences.

1. You're conflating two different meanings of the word "Education". The "Education" section of this forum is for the discussion of skeptical topics generally related to the schooling of children. You then pretend that "Education" actually means any and all efforts to inform anyone about skepticism.

2. You have concluded that the topics discussed by the membership of this forum correlate to the real-world actions of those individuals.

3. You have concluded that the membership of this forum represents the body of people who are skeptics.

4. You have concluded that the amount of discussion on an internet chat board is a reliable way of determining what people are "for" or "against."

__________________- I haven't refused to answer it; I just haven't been able to answer it... Jabba

So you prefer complete credulity? If someone offers you a miracle cure for only $100,000, you will immediately scrape together the cash and fork it over, because applying cautious scrutiny to the veracity of this claim would be "ludicrous"?

That explains a lot.

__________________Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone.

No offence taken. What do you think of my green cow example of how scepticism works in the "field"?

We already know why cheese turn green. It is the mold that causes it to turn green. If you knew that and was less of a Skeptic. You might have ended checking her out for suspect mold instead of being directed to a dead cow.

From the responses it is obvious none of the participants are philosophy majors and unfortunately Skeptics lack an understanding of Epistemology. Discussion on solipsism, empiricism and rationalism require an understanding of their philosophical roots.

Kurtz has popularized scientific skepticism and critical thinking about claims of the paranormal.

Hurtz was not a scientist. He implored Skeptics to apply scientific method. In short scientific skepticism is for non scientific people.
Now how practical is it for a non scientific person to apply scientific method.
1. In America less than 5% of the working population make a living as engineers and scientist. So if you separate the scientist from engineers the percentage of the population actually making a living applying the scientific method is even smaller. How practical is that?

2. Scientific method requires a proficiency in the field of study. One cannot claim to know the scientific method and based on just this knowledge apply for a job as a research scientist.

Definition of scientific method Oxford dictionary.
1. a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses:

In short, only the professionals can apply scientific method. Only the professionals can tackle complex phenomena for verifiability. The scientific method is beyond the scope of the average Skeptic.

Why then do Skeptic Forums promote the criticism of things not well understood; how they appear awkward, are marginalized and often found rather unhelpful.